OS X 10.8.1 May Address Mountain Lion Battery Life Issues

Earlier this month, we pointed to testing by Ars Technica showing that upgrading to OS X Mountain Lion on a test Retina MacBook Pro substantially degraded its battery life. The testing showed a 38% decrease in battery life, moving from eight hours of battery life on a single charge under OS X Lion to just five hours under OS X Mountain Lion.

apple 7hr battery magsafe
Softpedia now reports that it has heard from one developer claiming that OS X 10.8.1, which entered developer testing just days after Ars Technica's report, does indeed address this battery life issue.

“Until I installed 10.8.1, my MacBook was showing 4h:05m after a full charge,” he said, referring to the amount of time before the battery would deplete completely.

“After installing 10.8.1 it's showing over 8h,” he said. “I'm now able to use my Mac throughout the day again without having to carry my charger,” said the happy developer.

Another report from Apple's discussion forums describes a similar major boost to battery life under OS X 10.8.1, but results from our own forums are less clear. Several users have reported no changes to their battery life while others suggest that there has been some improvement, but it appears that specific testing by those who were affected by the Mountain Lion battery life drop has not been well-documented.

OS X 10.8.1 will be the first maintenance release for OS X Mountain Lion, and such updates are generally pushed quickly through the development and testing processes in order to address the most severe bugs cropping up with the initial public releases of new operating systems. Significant battery life issues would seem to qualify as something Apple would want to address in this update, but the company has not specifically addressed the topic in release notes or other documentation associated with the test builds being distributed.

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Top Rated Comments

attila Avatar
162 months ago
Menu.battery.text = battery_level * 2; // was battery_level

FIXED!
Score: 23 Votes (Like | Disagree)
SvK Avatar
162 months ago
pretty sloppy Apple.
Score: 14 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Krazy Bill Avatar
162 months ago
Discussions of "Battery Life" belong in the religion or politics forums.

Nobody will ever agree.
Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)
squirekyle Avatar
162 months ago
Thank Goodness. Steve Jobs would have never... shut up*
Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Vctr Avatar
162 months ago
I wonder if the reported battery life increase is measured from real word use or if these developers are just going off the estimated battery life.

From the Ars Technica quote, it looks like they are going off of the estimate, which we all know is wildly inaccurate half of the time.
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
macscancrash Avatar
162 months ago
Not everyone lives where there is a Starbucks, or where there is highspeed internet...or a coffee shop every damn corner. Stop being a snob.

McDonalds.

Snob that.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)